Nonlinear vibrations of shallow shells with complex boundary: R-functions method and experiments

Geometrically nonlinear vibrations of shallow circular cylindrical panels with complex shape of the boundary are considered. The R-functions theory and variational methods are used to study the problem. The R-functions method (RFM) allows constructing in analytical form the sequence of basis functions satisfying the given boundary conditions in case of complex shape of the boundary. The problem is reduced to a single second-order differential equation with quadratic and cubic nonlinear terms. The method developed has been initially applied to study free vibrations of shallow circular cylindrical panels with rectangular base for different boundary conditions: (i) clamped edges, (ii) in-plane immovable simply supported edges, (iii) classically simply supported edges, and (iv) in-plane free simply supported edges. Then, the same approach is applied to a shell with complex shape of the boundary. Experiments have been conducted on an aluminum panel with complex shape of the boundary in order to identify the nonlinear response of the fundamental mode; these experimental results have been compared to numerical results.